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Shaw, Bob.THE PEACE MACHINE.
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1985. Octavo, boards. First hardcover edition. Revised and updated version of GROUND ZERO MAN (1971). "... Bob Shaw's GROUND ZERO MAN concludes that man's love affair with his weapons will be almost impossible to dissolve. Convinced that the atom bomb will forever hold men hostage, Lucas Hutchman, Shaw's hero, decides to play God and free us. He secretly builds a device which will spontaneously explode all the world's nuclear bombs and then informs the N-powers of the day he will trigger their arsenals. The day comes and the bombs go, but not forever. Before long the nuclear arms race begins again, with bombs designed to foil the Hutchman Trigger. Hutchman realizes that he has only detoured the arms race, and unnecessarily. The restocking meant fewer schools and hospitals, less food and medicine. How many babies had he killed, he wonders, by vainly meddling with man's oldest obsession?" - Berger, Science Fiction and the New Dark Age, p. 181. "The best modern version of a plot that was popular in the 1930." - Anatomy of Wonder (1987) 4-486. "Good enough to put Shaw up there with John le Carré and Len Deighton for intelligent pungency." - Peter Nicholls, Foundation. A fine copy in nearly fine price-clipped dust jacket. (#93990).

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